The English Bookshop

More than 20,000 books crowd the shelves of this award-winning store in Uppsala, Sweden. Owner Jan Smedh talks to Alex Greig about four of his current favourites.

Lewis Shiner’s Outside the Gates of Eden is an epic read about the United States’ society from the mid-1960s until now, seen through the lens of a long friendship. It covers the ’60s music revolution and explores changes in American values since then. It’s been compared to the work of Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon and I stayed up far too late over many nights to finish it. A truly great American novel.

Elizabeth Hand excels in Curious Toys, a thriller set in 1915 Chicago about a girl dressed as a boy chasing down a serial killer in an amusement park with the help of the mad genius that was the artist Henry Darger. It’s gripping, weird and exciting and will keep you riveted throughout. I’ve read almost everything Hand has written and she never disappoints.

Shortly before he died, David Bowie made a list of the 100 books that had meant the most to him. In Bowie’s Books, John O’Connell’s essays about the musician’s selections offer analysis into how the books affected Bowie’s life and work. It is both a list of must-reads and an almostbiography through what he liked to read. Fascinating.

Niklas Natt och Dag’s Swedish novel The Wolf and the Watchman, set in Stockholm in 1793, is about a gruesome murder that pairs two unlikely heroes who wade through muck and conspiracies to find out what happened. Well researched and written, it will give you a real – and entertaining – insight into life in the Swedish capital in the late 18th century. Extremely difficult to put down!